Letting an Illusion Go
by radialarch
Summary: There's a reason why Sally Donovan became a police officer. / Pre-Study in Pink. Character study. One-shot.


**Title:** Letting an Illusion Go

**Disclaimer: **These characters are the product of a mind better than my own.

**Spoilers: **None.

**Pairings: **None.

**Rating: **T

**Warnings:** Mention of rape and murder.

**Wordcount: **620

**Summary:** There's a reason why Sally Donovan became a police officer.

_A/N: In the drugs bust scene of _A Study in Pink_, Sally's line, "And he'll always let you down," seems be crying out for a backstory. This is my explanation of how Sherlock disappointed her._****  
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* * *

><p><strong>Decision.<strong>

Sally Donovan is eight when she first lays eyes on a murder victim. It is her father, a knife neatly buried between two of his ribs.

The police conclude it's a mugging gone wrong―_utterly, terribly wrong_―, but they never catch the murderer. Her mother cries when Sally's supposed to be sleeping, but she lies wide awake and hears every sound.

Sally resolves that no one else will have to go through this alone.

* * *

><p><strong>Determination.<strong>

She's fresh out of training when her team investigates the death of a girl, brutally raped and dumped in a skip. Gregson's first thought is fingerprints. Sally's first thought is the girl's family.

It's the ex-boyfriend, and they catch him two days later, drunk and boasting in a pub.

She throws up in the bathroom before the trial, then goes in to testify, voice unwavering. When the jury finds him guilty, she shoots him a razor-edged smile.

She hugs the girl's mother and wonders if anyone did that for her own.

* * *

><p><strong>Recognition.<strong>

D.I. Lestrade calls her into his office one day. "Donovan, I've been watching your work."

"Is there a problem, sir?"

"You care―a lot―about the victims and their family."

Sally braces herself. She's heard it all before―how compassion only gets in the way, clouds the thinking, and makes for a less effective police officer. Or worse, that a woman just isn't cut out for this line of work.

"How would you feel about switching to my unit?"

"I―sir?"

"I know what Gregson thinks." The D.I.'s smile is understanding. "But I happen to believe that people like you make _better_ officers―more motivated, dedicated, and fiercer in hunting a criminal down."

She gapes at him, having lost all of her words.

"Well, consider it, anyway," he says, and Sally knows she's been dismissed.

She stumbles out of the office and puts in a request for transfer within the hour.

* * *

><p><strong>Reverence.<strong>

After the grief is finally tamed and it becomes possible to feel other emotions, what the families want―_need_―is justice. Closure. Some sort of assurance that their loss wasn't just something senseless, random.

That's why Sally hates seeing cases go cold, the leads slipping from her fingertips. It reminds her too much of her mother, crying alone in the darkness.

And then comes a man who calls himself the Consulting Detective: Sherlock Holmes.

Holmes seems endowed with some mysterious power, unerringly picking the right trail to follow in a mire of dead ends. He is the reason why the stack of cold-case files on D.I. Lestrade's desk dwindles, a shepherd offering a ray of hope.

Sally thinks he might even be a hero.

That illusion shatters the first time they work together.

* * *

><p><strong>Fall.<strong>

The case involves children. Dead, _mutilated_ children.

Holmes is grinning wildly as he whirls through the crime scene. "Brilliant!" He exclaims while examining a carefully detached finger, and again as he peers at a blood-stained chest.

"Excuse me," Sally breaks in when she can't stand it anymore. "Exactly _what_ is so brilliant?"

He shoots her a disinterested look. "How long would you say this boy has been dead?"

"Can't have been long―five, six hours at the most?"

"Wrong. Three days, minimum. The killer has to have had medical training―no, he's still working, still has access to the necessary equipment. There's no other way he could have disguised the bodies this well. Oh, he's _good_."

It's the note of admiration that sets her off. "Do you even care that these kids are dead?"

"Care? Why?"

As Holmes bounds off to badger D.I. Lestrade, Sally stands still, trying to bite back the disappointment, the loss of an idol.

Sherlock Holmes doesn't solve crimes because it's right; he solves them because he thinks it's _fun_.

And Sally can't understand that at all.

* * *

><p><em>Reviews would be amazing.<em>


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